Luis García Meza Tejada (b. August 8, 1932, La Paz, Bolivia) is a former Bolivian dictator. A
native of La Paz, he was a
career military officer who rose to the rank of general during the
reign of dictator Hugo
Banzer (1971-78). García Meza became Dictator in 1980.

Contents

Prelude
to Dictatorship

García Meza became leader of the right-wing faction of
the Military of Bolivia most
disenchanted with the return to civilian rule. Many of the officers
involved had been part of the Banzer dictatorship and disliked the
investigation of economic and human right abuses by the new
Bolivian Congress. Moreover, they tended to regard the decline in
popularity of the Carter administration in the United States. as
an indicator that soon a Republican
administration would replace it -- one more amenable to the kind of
pro-U.S. anti-Communist dictatorship they wanted to reinstall in
Bolivia. Ominously, many allegedly had ties to the cocaine
traffickers and made sure portions of the military acted at their
enforcers/protectors in exchange for extensive bribes, which in
turn were used to fund the upcoming coup. In this manner, the
narcotraffickers were in essence purchasing for themselves the
upcoming Bolivian government.

Coup
d'etat

This group pressured President Lydia Gueiler (his
cousin) to install Gen. García Meza as Commander of the Army.
Within months, the Junta
of Commanders headed by Garcia Meza forced a violent coup
d'etat -- sometimes referred to as the Cocaine Coup -- of July
17, 1980. As portions of the citizenry resisted, as they had done
in the fail putsch of November 1979, it resulted in dozens of
deaths. Allegedly, the Argentinian army unit Batallón de Inteligencia
601 participated in the coup.

The García Meza
Dictatorship, 1980-81

Of extremely conservative anti-communist
persuasion, García Meza endeavored to bring a Pinochet-style
dictatorship that was intended to last 20 years. He immediately
outlawed all political parties, exiled opposition leaders,
repressed the unions, and muzzled the press. He was backed by
former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and
Italian neofascistStefano Delle Chiaie. Further
collaboration came from other European neofascists, most
notoriously Ernesto Milá Rodríguez (accused of the
Paris synagogue bombing of 1980. [1] Among
other foreign collaborators were professional torturers allegedly
imported from the notoriously repressive Argentine dictatorship of
General Jorge Videla.

The García Meza regime, while brief (its original form ended in
1981), became internationally known for its extreme brutality. The
population was repressed in ways as the Banzer dictatorship did.
Indeed, some 1,000 people are estimated to have been killed by the
Bolivian
army and security forces in only 13 months. The
administration's chief repressor was the Minister of Interior,
Colonel Luis Arce, who cautioned that all
Bolivians who may be opposed to the new order should "walk around
with their written will under their arms."

The most prominent victim of the dictatorship was the
congressman, presidential candidate, and gifted orator Marcelo Quiroga, murdered
and "disappeared" soon after the coup. Quiroga had been the chief
advocate of bringing to trial the former dictator, General Hugo Banzer (1971-78),
for human right violations and economic mismanagement.

Drug
trafficking

The García Meza government drug trafficking
activities led to the complete isolation of the regime. The new,
conservative U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, kept his distance, aware
of the regime's unsavory links to criminal circles. Eventually, the
international outcry was sufficiently strong to force García Meza's
resignation on August 3, 1981. He was succeeded by a less tainted
but equally repressive general, Celso Torrelio.

All in all, the Bolivian military would sustain itself in power
only for another year, and would then beat a hasty retreat to its
barracks, embarrassed and tarnished by the excesses of the 1980-82
dictatorships (it has never returned to the Palacio
Quemado).

Exile and
Jail

At that point, García Meza left the country, but was tried and
convicted in absentia for the serious human rights violations incurred by his
regime. In 1995, he was extradited to Bolivia from Brazil and is
still serving a 30 year prison sentence, in the same prison where
he once kept his enemies. His main collaborator, the notorious
Colonel Arce, was extradited to the United States, where he is
currently serving a jail sentence for drug trafficking.